Email this article to a friend

Sergio Ermotti, former co-head of global equity markets at Merrill Lynch, has been appointed as the new head of investment banking at UniCredit, the Italian bank that recently acquired Germany's HVB.

The Italian bank said in a statement that Ermotti will immediately become head of multinational and investment banking and a deputy general manager of the bank. Ermotti, a Swiss national, is fluent in Italian, German, English and French.

He left Merrill Lynch in 2003 and was one of an entire layer of senior bankers who departed the bank in the 18 months after Stan O'Neal became chief executive and promoted some of his junior protégés to top positions.

Ermotti said he would leave the bank just two weeks after Dow Kim was promoted above him to be in charge of equities. O'Neal promoted Kim and Greg Fleming, co-head of the financial institutions group, to co-heads of global markets and investment banking.

Ermotti joined Merrill in 1987 in Zurich in equity-linked trading. He moved up to head of global equity derivatives in 1993 and became head of global equity linked products three years later.

In 1999 he was promoted to head of equity markets for Europe, the Middle East and Africa with responsibility for primary and secondary cash trading and sales in the region. Two years later Ermotti become co-head of Merrill Lynch's global equity markets group based in London alongside Jeff Edwards in New York.

At HVBStefan Jentzsch, the head of investment banking, left during the German bank's deal with UniCredit. He is now head of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

Jentzsch succeeded Andrew Pisker, who left DrKW amid plans to merge the investment bank with the corporate banking division of Dresdner Bank, the parent company.